


salve

by Otterly



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otterly/pseuds/Otterly
Summary: Fangmeyer freaks out in the living room after sleeping with her longtime work partner.
Relationships: Fangmeyer/Grizzoli (Zootopia)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	salve

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I wrote this during a buddy's 24-hour art stream in the span of maybe 8 or 9 hours. 
> 
> This is a sort-of sequel to my 2016 story Tiger, Tiger, Late at Night. It's my hope that this can stand on its own as a one-off character piece but it might read a little better if you read that first. It can be found here:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/13699047
> 
> But if you don't care or if you've already read, then please, enjoy!

When Fangmeyer pushed Grizzoli away, he whined and asked her, “How am I supposed to stop kissing you?”

She told him, “Maybe you aren’t,” and pressed their lips together again. Then he took her to his apartment.

This was after all the important stuff; after they realized that the prints at the initial scene didn’t match the ones on the gun; after they followed the trail to that warehouse in Sahara Square; after they nearly got fired by Bogo for causing an international incident; after the week of stakeouts and conspiracy theories and Wilde having to bust out his old connections to help them travel through the districts unseen; after the press conference and the key to the city. 

Emotions were running high. Fangmeyer wasn’t going to lie to herself about that. The crowd of people cheering for her and Grizz had gotten to her. Made her vulnerable. So when all of it was over and they were on the verge of saying goodbye, after they had spent _weeks_ together, and Fangmeyer passed by Grizzoli and he grabbed her hand, could anyone have blamed her for kissing him, or anything else that happened next? 

Fangmeyer couldn’t sleep after that. Not after the sex (four hours), or the cuddling (two hours), or the time spent mindlessly scrolling through her phone (edging on five hours, the sun had set long ago), unable to read or process anything she was seeing upon realizing that she had just slept with her (co-worker, best friend, emotional rock) partner of...god, how long had it been? Four years, now?

Whenever she closed her eyes she imagined his face. His white fur and his smile, the special one that he reserved only for her, for some reason, and she felt butterflies when she managed to keep her focus on him instead of just feeling sick, but even when she could manage to simply sit there and think of his face and listen to him snoring beside her in his bed, it was only a matter of time before she felt sick again.

So she wandered out of his bedroom and she sat on his couch and she took part in her favorite pastime: brooding the night away.

The first thing that came to her mind was that this was wrong, because it was against the rules. Not only that, but it was against the rules and she was someone _other_ than Hopps and Wilde, which meant that the rules actually applied to her. They mattered. They _meant something._ Their lives and careers were at stake and she had broken the rules. Because it had been eight years since she had last been touched and she’d been wanting Grizzoli to touch her for the last two, and today was a day that she couldn’t have taken a moment more completely alone.

Wolves. They smelled. Grizzoli wasn’t an exception. He smelled like pine needles. His paws smelled like fritos. He was kind to her the whole time they fucked, eyeing her face constantly and asking if she was okay, licking her neck and her cheek, ignoring the helpless whimpers that escaped her every so often. He was twenty-six. She was nearly thirty-five now. 

The cold from the glass in her paw decided to start biting. She finished her drink and put it on the table, wiping the condensed water from her fur on the scratched up cotton of the couch. 

How had she gotten here? 

Did she deserve it? 

She deserved the raise that Bogo gave her. Deserving another mammal, someone with thoughts and life and agency, deserving the time and love that Grizzoli had given her tonight was an entirely different beast to tackle in her mind. She wasn’t sure where to start, or if she should start down that path at all (because she knew the answer was a hard ‘no’), but it was where she kept ending up. And the only answer that she could think of was no. No, she didn’t deserve this. 

If she didn’t deserve this, why? 

Why, Grizzoli? Why did you get along so well with a tiger who was old and sad, who was everything you weren’t? Who had shattered everything she had ever held in her paws, even though she tried so hard, held the mammals she loved so delicately, like baby birds with broken wings?

A thought happened upon her: she could’ve asked him. It gave her the same kind of sobriety that came when one accidentally stepped on a kitten’s tail. Her heartbeat drummed. She could’ve asked him. She should’ve asked him. Asked him anything other than “Are you sure?” and “Are you close?” 

Fangmeyer stood up. For the first time tonight she was sober enough to survey Grizzoli’s apartment. Today marked the first time she had ever been inside, which was a strange fact that everyone else at the ZPD could hardly believe, but it was true. Fangmeyer had only ever had Grizzoli at her place, and never vice-versa. They had never talked about it, but Fangmeyer knew why. Grizzoli was a romantic—at least when it came to her—and he wanted the first time she saw his home to be special. He wanted her to look at where he lived and feel as at home in it as he did, and to feel like she could stay forever. Because he wanted her to. 

He had a couch and a loveseat in the living room, both hovering around a wide coffee table with an aloe vera plant on top, and a few feet away sat a fireplace. He had a well-stocked kitchen and his bed was comfortable enough. And he was warm, and he looked at her like she was the sun, and she felt like she didn’t belong here in the same way that a weed didn’t belong in a garden but wanted so fucking badly to stay.

She was going to wake him up. She knew that now. There wasn’t any way that the sun was going to rise before they had a healthy discussion on professional boundaries and their friendship and everything else. 

She needed to make some ramen. 

It was during the Big Freeze—when Tundratown had been closed off completely from the rest of Zootopia in order to apprehend a pair of criminals that the ZIA had been tailing for years and years—and Fangmeyer and Grizzoli were one of six police units sent to the district’s main square. They had parked their car near a cabaret, and to the tune of slutty EDM they talked until the sub-zero temperatures outside began to feel normal.

Fangmeyer admitted that she thought the last two divorces were purely her own fault, and that she didn’t know if she was ever meant to get married again. Grizzoli put his paw on hers and said that—God, what did he say? She only knew that it made her feel better. And then, in an attempt to match her level of vulnerability, told her that his favorite food was the cheap packaged one dollar ramen at the bottom of every grocery store shelf, topped with salt-packed anchovies.

The very same dish would be something that Grizzoli would feel better about waking up to, as opposed to her needy face. Not that he’d be mad. Outwardly. She cooked as fast as she could, but took her time to make sure that it tasted good. Then she put the bowl of ramen on the coffee table in the living room and crept off to the bedroom.

Every step felt glacial and like it was on broken glass, but she made it to Grizzoli, still deep in sleep, and after a few gentle shakes, he awoke.

When he caught sight of her, he blinked several times, and then he tilted his head and squinted. Like he was trying to gauge whether or not this was a dream or reality. 

Grizzoli smiled when he saw that she wasn’t disappearing any time soon. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said. “Can we talk? I made you ramen.”

And Grizzoli was all too happy to follow, nipping at her triceps until they were sitting on the couch and he was slurping up noodles like his life depended on it.

“So goooood,” he groaned. 

“Glad you like it,” she said, smiling a bit. 

He returned her smile. “What did you want to talk about?” 

And when she said “Us,” she watched his face fall in disappointment, and her heart broke all at once.

“You didn’t like it?” he asked. “Any of it?” he clarified, before she could ask whether he meant the sex or the cuddling or the Him of it all.

“I did,” she said. 

“But?”

“But!” she repeated. “But why! Grizz, we’ve been friends for years. We’ve known each other—it feels like so long. Why now? We didn’t...I don’t know! Don’t you feel weird?”

“I feel right,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

He closed his eyes and he winced, curling his lips back, and in the bright gloss of his incisor Fangmeyer saw her heart break for the second time in the last five minutes. She looked away. Shame pooled deep in her belly, viscous and thick and prickly. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

“What did you mean, then?” he asked, desperation tugging at every word before he winced at something else. “Fuck, I need some water. I feel a hangover coming on.”

“Are you gonna be alright?”

“Don’t pay attention to me,” he said. “Tell me what you meant please.”

Fangmeyer felt her words move forward, leaping at the chance to be spoken, but she remembered all too late that she had a cage around her heart and they couldn’t ever hope to escape. She felt her words claw at the metal bars she built around herself, and in the silence she created she wanted to scream. But she couldn’t do that either. She could only stare at the pictures of Grizzoli’s family placed above the fireplace as he sat beside her and waited for a good response.

He wouldn’t get one. Her lip quivered. “Grizz, I don’t know if this was a good idea.”

“Well, I do!” he said. She rarely said anything he could respond to in more than two seconds, and it seemed that even with the current topic of discussion that was still true. “Fang, you’re amazing! You’re—”

“Stop,” she said. 

Grizzoli’s ears flattened. Fangmeyer heard them droop against his skull. “Why?”

“None of what you think about me is true,” she wanted to say. But instead: “I don’t like hearing it.”

Grizzoli snorted like he was a puppy whose chew toy had been cruelly ripped away from him. “Don’t care.”

He did. He wouldn’t say another word until she hinted that she was okay with it. 

Fangmeyer kept her eyes on the pictures above the fireplace. They were mostly of Grizzoli and his fathers—a grizzly bear and a dingo, usually in military uniforms—but there were a few of him and his old wolf pack. Grizzoli had grown up quite a ways away from Zootopia, by the coast, in a city most well known for its cuisine, beaches and the export of fish. She had always had the hunch that he missed all of it. There was a small town kid at the heart of the wildfire of a wolf that was her partner, homesick and wanting something slower and steadier than anything Zootopia could offer.

Fangmeyer knew that she must have looked like that at first glance, but slow and steady were everything that she wasn’t. 

The pictures suddenly became unbearable to look at. Fangmeyer focused in on what was closer to her; the aloe vera plant on the coffee table. 

“Fang?” Grizzoli asked. “Talk to me.”

“This was a mistake,” she said. 

“Yeah?” Grizzoli laughed without humor. “No. Absolutely not. This was years in the making. This was the happy ending. Or, like, the beginning of it!”

Fangmeyer raised an eyebrow at him. “What comes next, then? We move in with each other? Have kids? Raise them away from Zootopia in some stupid good-for-nothing place where they can dream about moving out so they can move back to Zootopia and do all of this over again?”

Grizzoli shrugged. Desperation was starting to peek out from behind him. Fangmeyer could see it in how his body shrunk into itself. “Maybe,” he said. 

“And what if this is a one time thing?” Fangmeyer asked.

“I don’t think it is,” Grizzoli said.

“And why not?”

“Because I know you and you don’t do one time things.”

“I might,” Fangmeyer said.

Grizzoli crossed his arms. “Well, then.”

Fangmeyer wanted to say sorry, but at this point she had given up on thinking about what she wanted to do. She could only do what she would. “I can’t be what you want me to be, Grizz. You’re young and you’re so…” She took a moment to take him in. “You’re so beautiful. You have a future. You have your whole life ahead of you and I’m nearly done with mine.”

“That’s not true,” he said, leaning forward. “Fang, come on. Please don’t talk like that. Please.” His voice was growing softer. “My future is with you, Fang. Can you let it be?”

And Fangmeyer, knowing full well that the best answer for her would be “Yes”, shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t. When I think about how much I want this, and I look at your nice apartment and those pictures of your parents, Grizz, holy fucking shit—Grizzoli, you’re _perfect_. I can’t be here.”

Grizzoli cried without sobbing. He cried silently, and his tears raced down his face, over his cheeks as they sank into his fur. 

Fangmeyer couldn’t watch. She stood up and turned and only a few feet away stood the door.

If she were to leave now, would things be the same? Of course not, but they already weren’t going to be. The sleeping together portion of the evening made sure of that. So what would change, if she were to leave without another word?

Everything, no matter what. But more would change if she stayed. If they made their relationship public they would get reassigned to different partners, unlike Wilde and Hopps, Bogo’s fucking darlings, and they would only see each other on evenings, on good days, and Fangmeyer didn’t know if she could handle that. There was a chance that they would be too tired to talk whenever they caught each other. There was a chance that she would watch as her best friend turned into a stranger and she wouldn’t even care, that she would be too busy to notice before it was too late.

But if she left right now, Grizzoli wouldn’t talk to her. For a long time he wouldn’t say anything beyond polite hellos and the occasional request for donuts or takeout while on the beat, and then he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He would forgive her, because he would forgive anything she did, and they would go back to how it was before that. They would be right back to their old song and dance like nothing had ever happened. She could pretend she didn’t know how he tasted and he could pretend he wasn’t completely, utterly in love.

Fangmeyer didn’t want to leave, but she decided that the better option here was to do what she didn’t want. She only wanted things that would hurt her in the end, and she didn’t want to be hurt again.

Back when she didn’t know any better this wouldn’t have been a debate. When she was still a rookie and her fiancé was still hers she would have apologized for her cowardice and she would have leapt head first into love’s warm arms, because she hadn’t learned yet that she wasn’t supposed to have a happy ending. She hadn’t learned that all being honest would do was give her enemies (her lovers, same thing) more artillery in the war that every relationship became. She hadn’t learned that her pessimism, the way that she knew the worst thing that could happen in any situation, the thing that made her so good at her job, was a vile, parasitic thing. She never noticed how parties died around her, how conversations wilted and hopes and dreams crumbled like ash. 

But this was Grizzoli, she thought, and I’ve never dated another cop. And maybe this could be different.

And maybe it could but Fangmeyer didn’t want to find out because she didn’t know if she’d survive if things ended up the same as they had always been. So she took the first step towards the door and Grizzoli stood as well.

“Fang?” he asked. He sounded like a pup.

She didn’t slow her stride. The door was close. She reached for the knob.

“Fangmeyer!” he yelled. He never raised his voice at her. Not in anger or sadness. “Where are you going?”

Fangmeyer turned the knob and opened the door, and outside there lay a blanket of fresh snow on the grass.

But Grizzoli lived in Savannah Central, which meant that this was an unexpected snow. The real kind, and not the maintained flurries that kept Tundratown in check.

The cold wrapped around Fangmeyer’s waist and ribs, a steel corset of air, and it squeezed. She hissed and closed her eyes, and she leaned forward. There was only another step before her feet hit the frosty pavement, and she was gone. She could leave and this could be it and that could be everything.

“Fangmeyer!” Grizzoli cried. “You fucking dumbass, you’re not wearing anything but my boxers!”

Fangmeyer looked down. She hadn’t had the time to pay attention to her clothes, but it was true. She had no top on, and around her waist were Grizzoli’s boxers—neon orange things that were three sizes too small for her and felt like they may as well have been short shorts.

She closed the door. The cold air dissipated under the apartment’s warmth. 

Grizzoli was grinning. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“I was…” Grizzoli waved a paw in the air. “I was trying.”

“You should’ve tried harder,” Fangmeyer squeaked. 

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

And then there was nothing to say for a moment. And Fangmeyer walked to the living room and she sat on the loveseat, distinctly away from Grizzoli but near enough to feel him, and that was everything to her.

“What now?” she said.

“We can talk?” he suggested. 

“I don’t know if I’m ready to,” she said.

“Well, do you at least want to stay?”

She nodded her head. 

“That’s good,” he said. And he got off the couch and he approached her, and she let him straddle her lap so he could put his paws on her face. “You’re freezing,” he whispered. “How’s about I keep you warm?”

Fangmeyer frowned, fully and openly, and she leaned her cheek into one of his paws, the warmer one. “You don’t want this, Grizz.”

Grizzoli whispered, “Don’t tell me what I want.”

“I’m broken.”

“Let me heal you.”

“You can’t.”

“Let me _try.”_

Her eyes landed on the aloe vera plant on the coffee table. Only now could she notice its dead leaves, broken at the bases but now nearly healed, but the damage was still visible. She looked to the side, at Grizzoli’s family photos, and she saw that there was a distinct lack of a sister. He had always talked about his sister to her at work— he thought the world of her. And she realized that none of anything here was completely perfect. There were mysteries and scars beyond her knowledge.

“Okay,” she said. And she didn’t want to be okay with it but she was. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be okay. Maybe that would come later. 


End file.
